Sir Ludar Part 39

I soon learned what little she had to tell of her own adventures. After leaving Dunluce she had been kept close prisoner in Toome Castle by her old step-dame, despite her father's protest, who had no more voice in his own house than a dog and was not sorry to escape from it to Castleroe. The English soldier who had been sent to guard her was not admitted within the walls, but paced--faithful fellow--outside, within sight of her window, the only reminder she had of the happiness she had lost. Presently rumours came that Ludar had been slain in battle; and after a while Captain Merriman came on a visit. Happily, this time, he returned not to the violence with which he had persecuted her at Castleroe, but tried to win her by civilities which were scarcely less loathsome to her than his old rudenesses. Amongst other things, he told her Ludar had cursed her for being his brother's murderess; and that he believed it was true, as had been reported, that the young McDonnell was slain. And two days after, to confirm this, an officer came to the Castle with news that Ludar's head was set on a pole above the gate at the Bridge of Dublin.

After that, the maiden said, she wished no longer to live. For she knew not what to believe; or how much was a wicked plot to deceive her into yielding to the Captain. Presently her father came home, and she begged him on her knees to send her to England. He consented; but when my Lady heard of it, she took the whim to go to Court too, and invited the Captain to be their escort. So nothing was gained by that move--or nothing would have been gained, had not Providence directed that Captain Merriman and my Lady should grievously fall out on the journey about some act of disrespect to herself, such as the neglecting to see her lifted to her horse before he a.s.sisted the maiden. Whatever the cause was, it saved the maiden much trouble during the journey; for the Captain was kept thereby at arm's length and never permitted to come near. And, to add to her comfort, she had espied among the men who formed the escort the same English fellow who had escorted her from Dunluce to Toome, and who, it was clear, was still true to his trust.

But as they neared London, my Lady, feeling in need of some little pomp to make good her entry, took the Captain back once more into favour; and with that the maiden's troubles began again. For the Captain bargained, as a price of his good-will, that he should wed the maiden so soon as they reached town. To this my Lady seemed to consent, and told her step-daughter, sternly enough, to prepare herself for what was no longer to be avoided.

Thus made desperate, on a certain morning about a day's ride from London, the maiden made some pretence of her saddle being broken, and beckoned to the English fellow to come and attend to it. But instead of him, for his head was turned, came Tom Price the Captain's sergeant.

And while he made good the straps she took heart of grace and begged him, for pity's sake, help her, and slipped into his hand some gold pieces. And he, having no liking to see his master married and himself, perhaps, cast out of service, willingly offered to help her when the time came. So she bade him be ready with a horse at midnight of the very day they reached London, and to bring the other English fellow, if needs be, also.

The rest of the story I knew. How Tom Price had carried her to her old nunnery school at Canterbury; and how the fellow Gedge (though Tom had no mind to share the reward with him), discovered what was afoot and went to Canterbury too. And how Peter Stoupe, having heard the secret from the drunken sergeant, had found out the Captain, and sold the same to him; and, finally, after getting the honest watchdog out of the way, how, disguised as priests, those two villains had invaded the convent and, but for the Providence which took me thither, might have had her across seas and at their mercy long since.

"So, my good Humphrey," said the maiden, "once more I owe you more than my life. I cannot repay you, but Heaven will. Nay it is doing so already, in giving you this sweetest little Jeannette to love you."

And then, as her eyes grew dim, and her bosom heaved, I could guess whither her thoughts had flown, and how my happy lot contrasted with her own.

I had told her all I knew of Ludar, up to the time of the poet's letter.

But for a long time I durst not tell her of his visit to my master's house that evening while I was at Canterbury. At last, however, I summoned up courage, with Jeannette's help, to tell her that; and it was pitiful to see how it moved her.

"Talk of it no more," said she. "He will not return; or if he does, the sight of me--to whom he owes all these troubles, who tempted him to desert his duty and ruined his life--will drive him hence. Jeannette,"

said she, taking my little mistress' hand in hers, "why must one live when it would be so happy to die?"

"Maiden," said Jeannette, boldly, "you do wrong to talk so, and I shall love you less if you say it again. Of course he will come, and of course he loves you, and of course all will be happy yet. Is the G.o.d you pray to less kind and strong than ours?"

The maiden said nothing, but her cheeks flushed as she lifted Jeannette's little hand to her lips. And after that we seldom spoke together of Ludar. Yet he was in all our thoughts.

As for me, I wandered about the town night by night for many a week, hoping to hear of him. But never a word could I hear. And in time people ceased even to talk of the Scotch Queen and all the troublous times which had ended at her death. And a leaden weight was falling on my heart, as I wondered if I was never again to hold my friend's hand in mine; when one day I chanced to stumble on news of him in the strangest way.

It was near midsummer that a journeyman came urgently one day to my master from Master Barker's, her Majesty's printer, desiring his aid in the setting up in type of certain matter which was to be printed forthwith, but which Master Barker (being crowded with other work), must needs hire out to be done. My master, who desired by all means to keep the good graces of the Queen's printer, undertook to give the help asked for, and handed to me the paper to put in type. I opened it, and found it headed thus:--"A List of Persons who in these late grievous times have suffered punishment for treasonable acts against the state and person of her Most Gracious Majesty. To wit--"

Then followed a goodly list of names of persons suffering death in the ill cause; headed by that of the Scotch Queen herself. Afterwards came the names of certain persons imprisoned, together with a note of the place where each was imprisoned, and the term of his punishment.

Amongst these, towards the end, was a line which made my blood suddenly run cold, and set the stick a trembling in my hand. It ran thus:--

"_One, Ludar, an Irishman, who carried certain Letters abroad. He lieth in ye Tower of London, waiting Her Majesty's pleasure_."

The summer pa.s.sed, and each week the maiden's cheek grew paler. She had said little when Jeannette showed her the name on the proof which I had kept. But she quietly took the paper and hid it in her bosom, and for a day kept herself to her chamber.

After that she rarely mentioned Ludar's name, and when we spoke of him to her, she always changed the talk to something else. Once or twice, in the late summer evenings, I took her and Jeannette to row on the river. And on each occasion we dropped on the tide to below London Bridge, where standing out in the gloom of twilight we could see the great frowning Tower which held still, as we hoped, a life dear to us all.

But as the weeks sped by, with one consent we let go even that hope; and on the last evening, when we rowed, the maiden said--

"Humphrey, row us some other way to-night."

And as she spoke, her face looked to me scarcely less white than the s.h.i.+vering moonbeams on the water.

About the middle of the autumn, I met Will Peake one day, who told me that there had been of late not a few men hanged at Tyburn and elsewhere; some for recent treasons, and others whose sentence had been overhanging ever since the conspiracies concerning the Scotch Queen.

When I pressed him closer, he said he had been present at one hanging at Tyburn, but that was of a debaser of coins. But a friend of his, said he, had seen four traitors hanged, drawn, and quartered; of whom he knew the names of three. But the other, thought to be a Scotchman or Irishman, no one knew his name.

I begged Will to take me to his friend that I might hear more, and plainly told him my reason. Whereat he drew a very long face, and said he thought better of me than to consort with such vile carrion as these traitors to her Majesty. Nevertheless he took me to his friend to hear what he had to say.

His friend sickened me with a long story of the horrible death of these men, whereby he thought to entertain me as he had entertained not a few other idle fellows during the past month.

"Oh," said he, "pity on us you saw not the fourth rogue dangle--be hanged to him that he had no name! I tell you, Master Dexter, it almost made me creep to see all they did to make an end of him. First of all--"

"Hold thy peace, beast!" roared I. "Keep it to thyself. But tell me, what was he like?"

"If I be a beast," said he, mightily offended, "thou art like to hear that better from anyone else."

"Your pardon," said I, "but my imagination is quick, and your horrible story well-nigh made me ill."

He took this as a mighty compliment, and smoothed down forthwith.

"Ay, ay," said he, "some stomachs are squeamish, but I thought you one of the stout ones. This fourth fellow, say you? Marry, by the build of him he might be a brother of yours, for his feet dangled a foot nearer the ground than the others; and when it came to--"

"Was he dark or fair?" I asked hurriedly, frightened lest he should turn again to his horrible relation.

"Why, he had a shock of hair as like straw for colour as anything I saw.

I tell you no man knew his name. Some said he was a Highlander. And he looked it, though I never saw one. But a wilder, more bold-face, shameless villain I ne'er set eyes on. Ay, and he kept it up to the end, too; after the hanging and when they--"

"Have done!" cried I, angrily, "no more of that. But tell me one last thing. Said he anything, before he died?"

"Never a word. But there was a curl on his lip as if it were we who had the rope round our necks and not he; and when the chaplain came to exhort him, he swung round on his heel and pulls me out his papist crucifix and kisses it before all the people. What think you of that for a stubborn dog? The others died with their tails betwixt their legs, I tell you; but this notable ruffler, from the moment he swung aloft to the moment--"

I could stand him no more, and left him telling his horrible story to the church steeple; while I crawled back, scarce daring to think, to my master's house, I told this news neither to Jeannette nor the maiden.

For it might be false, as former panics had been. And if it were not false, what good could it do to break that gentle heart a day sooner than Heaven ordained?

So the year ended miserably, in doubt and gloomy foreboding; and Jeannette and I, as we looked at the maiden's white cheek and suffering brow, dare scarcely claim as our own the happiness which came of the love that grew daily betwixt us.

Now, I grieve to say that early in the new year, my master, who had of late seemed docile and obedient to the orders of the wors.h.i.+pful the Stationers' Company, fell once more into his evil practices of secret printing. I know not how or why it was, but more than once he was absent visiting the minister at Kingston; and once, that same Welshman, Master Penry, whom I had met in Oxford, came to our house and had a long conference there, and left behind him certain papers which my master carefully locked away.

And one night, after I had been late out, when I came back, I spied a light in the cellar below, and heard the rumble of a press there, and knew that, cost what it would, my master was once more risking his liberty and fortune at the bidding of his bishop-hating employers.

"Master," said I, boldly marching below, to where he stood busily working his press, "since I am to be your son-in-law, I may as well share your peril. Have I your leave?"

He looked half-vexed and half-contented; and declared that what he did, though it might be against the rules, was yet a righteous thing, and he wanted not my help unless I thought the same. This tract, said he, could it but get abroad, would save G.o.d's Church from much evil that threatened her; and to that end he was willing to risk his liberty in printing it.

Now, whether he was right or wrong, I was not scholar enough to understand all the tract said concerning the state of the Church. But since no one wished to see the Church improved more than I, I was ready to believe my master's cause a righteous one, and told him as much.

And having once lent myself to the work, it suited my humour to carry it on without question, though not without sundry misgivings as to how far it sorted with my loyalty to my Queen to be thus flying in the face of a decree of her honourable Star Chamber.

But before this labour was done, a new task fell into my hands. For one day, as I worked at my case, I heard a voice at the door say:

"Is it here I find my Hollander, like Pegasus clipped of his wings, yet giving wings to the thoughts of the wise, so that they may fly abroad, as, in sooth, shall presently mine own burning numbers? Salute me, my once servant, now honoured to be called my friend, and the goal of my muse-sped wanderings."

It was the poet. But how changed from the gay popinjay I knew on the _Misericorde_!

He was so lean that the skin scarce held together over his bones; his face was shrunk and nipped with hunger; a ragged beard hung from his chin. His attire was the same as he had worn when last I saw him, but so tattered and dirty and threadbare that it was a marvel to me it did not fall to pieces before my eyes. The great ruff drooped brown and dank upon his shoulders. The gay s.h.i.+rt and doublet hung like grey sackcloth on his limbs. His shoes flapped in fragments about his feet, and the empty scabbard at his belt swung like the shreds of a worn rope between his legs.

He was a sorry spectacle in truth, and but for his unchanged speech I might have looked at him long ere I knew him.